Khroen offers insight into the thought process of Gale Force eSports during the covered drafts.
Game 3, Sky Temple (vs. Naventic)
Khroen and GFE were ready for the Illidan/Tassadar pick from Naventic. They also view Tracer as a solid pick versus Illidan comps because he can't stop Tracer from diving the backline and can't stick to Tracer.
"We were really confident going against that...Illidan cannot keep up with Tracer"
Illidan comps tend to have a weakness: they often do not have a lot of crowd control. Illidan and Tassadar sure don't. Therefore, the best counter picks are heroes that are extremely effective when the enemy team lacks it. Gale Force's next two picks of Tracer and ETC are brilliant in this regard, especially the ETC pick. If Naventic wants a support that can deal with the threat of Mosh Pit, they are forced into a sub-optimal support for Illidan. Naventic winds up picking Brightwing to try to deal with ETC and Tracer... and it doesn't work out.
Game 3: Garden of Terror (vs. Murloc Geniuses)
When talking about compositions on Garden of Terror, one thing Khroen specifically mentions is the ability to be able to 'invade into their seed camps'. This is likely the big reason for the extremely aggressive Greymane/Tyrael/Kerrigan picks that Gale Force eSports opts for in this situation. We also hear Khroen's reasoning for the early Tyrael pick, and his explanation sheds a lot of light on why Tyrael is suddenly a highly contested hero in the North American meta.
"...Tyrael's actually pretty decent against that (Mosh Pit) because we can dive and use Sanctification"
"It's also pretty good against Falstad as well, because you dive Sanctification and if he Gusts it won't do anything"
Murloc Geniuses doesn't exactly have the greatest draft here. It's mentioned by the hosts that Murloc intended on picking heroes to deny them from Gale Force eSports. This resulted in a double tank composition with no melee hero for Uther to enable.
Game 4, Towers of Doom (vs. Murloc Geniuses)
Khroen reflects in hindsight that Murloc Geniuses banned Illidan in earlier games for a reason, and that they could have just first picked Illidan here, noting that they hadn't lost with him in the entire tournament. It's interesting that he says this despite not intending to build an Illidan-centric composition.
"We should not have picked Tychus here"
I think this pick pretty much lost GFE the game at draft, and the Tracer pick meant the Lili pick got insane blind value versus all three damage dealers of GFE. This is how an otherwise crazy double support comp with Lili from Murlocs actually enjoyed success. Also, Murloc Geniuses could have even pick Jug of 1000 Cups because Gale Force eSports had zero interrupts for it unless Tyrael picked Judgement.
It'll be interesting to see how Gale Force eSports drafts coming up in the next Fall Regional with Fan replacing Roflcopter.
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